


The Secret Diary of Olivia Mansfield

by Dusty



Series: Conversations In The Car [18]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, Diary/Journal, F/M, Gen, Original Character(s), Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-30
Updated: 2013-03-30
Packaged: 2017-12-07 00:42:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/742102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dusty/pseuds/Dusty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With James gone and her head full of ghosts, Olivia puts pen to paper.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Cub

The morning light was filtering in through the curtains. It was almost surprising. But she knew by now that the sun still came up, even when the world felt as if it had come to a shuddering halt. She lay cocooned in her duvet, staring at nothing, eyes haunted.

It was Saturday morning. He’d stolen away in the dark, leaving her with a kiss, murmured comforts and a set of instructions. That was the fun part. She was grounded for the day to sort out all her paperwork she’d been putting off.  She was forbidden to touch bourbon for two weeks as punishment for winding him up, and he made her solemnly promise she’d abide by that. But she’d got the mischief out of her system now. Just in time for him to leave her.

The loneliness rang in her ears. And she hated herself for becoming this.

Mid-morning she reluctantly traipsed through to the living room, retrieving some papers and a leather bound diary from her desk. Then she made herself comfortable on the sofa. It hurt to think. Her insides twisted. Without him it was just her and the world, the world that she had wanted to do proud. The world that she had singlehandedly torn chunks out of. The sunlight glared at her. Nowhere to hide.

She twiddled a pen between her fingers. She felt she was all bile, every deed eating at her. Then a stab of anger; _you do the best with the hand you are dealt_. And now self-pity. Why couldn’t James be here to stop the onslaught of thoughts? To silence the hissing of her soul.

She was no better than him, after all. And yet she was given so much more. Two parents, both lived a good long life, a good home, excellent schooling. An only child, spoiled of course, so they said. The son they never had.

The pen slipped out of her hand as her fingers twitched, falling onto the diary in her lap. She picked it back up and opened the leather cover. Fresh paper stared back at her, the new book smell reaching her nostrils. This was a gift from how many years ago…

She clicked the pen and began to write.

 

 

Daddy was one of those men who disappeared behind closed doors – the big, padded doors so you couldn’t hear what was being said. I tried to listen, but my mother would find me and chase me away with increasing ferocity. It was easier for them when it was time to go to school. I was a boarder, of course. I was raised to appreciate how lucky I was, and to take responsibility for my position in life. I was to excel academically and learn from anyone who was kind enough to school me. That was my brief.

When my father called me into his office, I was barely 11 years old. He told me I’d be going away to a school for children of tremendous privilege. He told me that the world was full of secrets, because it protected the world, just as parents can’t tell their children everything until the children are old enough to understand. He told me that he expected me to become one of the people who knew the secrets, but I would have to earn his trust first.

I could be devilishly sneaky as a little girl. My mother would dress me to look sweet and unassuming, but always regarded me with suspicion, as if I were clever than her. It was an alarming idea to me at time, but it turned out to be the case. She wasn’t stupid at all, but she was sweet natured and lacked the calculating mind I presume I inherited from my father. I always found a way around every instruction, every rule, every obstacle. When I was caught, the consequences were severe. But it just made me more careful, not more obedient. Her frustrations grew, and I felt keenly I was being sent away because she couldn’t manage me anymore. Why couldn’t I just obey her?

Daddy on the other hand, started to look at me as if I were a young racehorse in the making, despite, and perhaps because of, my transgressions.

Once, when I was 9, my mother had told me explicitly not to take books from the top two shelves in the library after I repeatedly had. That same year I’d been threatened with expulsion at my school following a fight where I broke a girl’s nose. I’d hidden school letters to my parents, and had generally driven my mother into the ground. I knew she would be furious. So I tried all the harder to deceive her.

I had used a step ladder in order to get to the ever elusive and enigmatic top shelf, at 3 o’clock in the morning when they were both in bed (the library was linked to daddy’s study and one of them, or one of daddy’s friends, was always there to guard it). I’d set my alarm and padded through the house barefoot, and replaced the book with my copy of Bleak House after swapping the jackets, then gone back to bed. She would see me being so very good, reading studiously. The book in question was Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and my best friend Maddy said she heard her parents rowing about it after her mother was discovered reading it. I’d spied it up there, among so many other treasures, and I couldn’t think about anything else.

I wasn’t prepared for the content of course, and I was given away by what I presume was an extremely red face. She whipped the book out of my hands and frogmarched me to my father’s study. She pushed me inside and announced the nature of my crime in a shrill voice, before throwing the book on to his desk and disappearing out of the room and slamming the door.

I hadn’t factored this in. It was always she who dealt with me. Now I stood before the man I strongly suspected was God, Sherlock Holmes, Father Christmas, and George Bernard Shaw rolled into one. His eyes regarded me with pure coldness at first and I thought I might be beaten with a cane or some such thing. I was trembling for sure, and he must have taken pity on me. He locked the book away with a devastating glare and made me relate my deception to him.

“How often do you scheme to wake up in the night and steal about being wicked?” he asked. He wasn’t smiling but I felt there was a note of humour in his question. I also felt in terrible danger, as though the wrong answer would surely result in his wrath.

I took a deep breath, and rather arrogantly replied, “Whenever I have a thirst for knowledge.”

Then I was sure he smiled, but he turned away from me at the same time. “Curiosity killed the cat,” he muttered, then looked at me with a fond sadness. “Do as your mother tells you,” he said, now looking out of the window and into an incomprehensible distance. “Run along.”

I didn’t think I’d heard him right.  “Aren’t you going to smack me?” I asked thoughtlessly, then realised that it was a very stupid thing to do – to introduce the idea when he hadn’t.

He didn’t turn around. “What good would that do, Olivia? No use muzzling a tiger.”

That remark chastened me for some time. I didn’t want to be a tiger. I left his study feeling oddly lost. My mother was waiting outside and seemed gravely disappointed to see I wasn’t crying or in obvious pain. Nevertheless, I looked her right in the eye and apologised. She started to cry and gave me a cuddle. Now, it’s the first thing I think of when I remember her.

So aged 11, and in his office, I was instructed to prove I was trustworthy in every aspect of my school life and ensuing womanhood, until such time that his Tigress should be released into the world. I expect that’s when I became a woman; standing there and promising him I wouldn’t let him down.

I saw them at Christmas and Easter. Summer holidays were often spent with Maddy, but daddy became increasingly impressed with my school work, and would spend time running through various tests with me during long summer evenings. I resented it until the tests caught my imagination.

They were like nothing I was being taught at school. Plus he would let me visit him at his office in London, and though I didn’t understand it then, the importance of the place was infectious. By the time I was 16, I was the jewel in his crown and he’d parade me around, sharing any academic successes with his colleagues who listened patiently. Then came the day he told me who he was.

It was frightening and exciting. I wasn’t to tell anyone, but he’d let me partake in the training exercises for new recruits, and I did for a couple of years. I was considered a harmless novelty on account of being female. The others were all boys between 16-21, from a variety of backgrounds. All could have been from anywhere; some breathtakingly feral while others were almost unworldly. I held my own, but they cottoned-on I was daddy’s daughter and could be vile to me. It’s where I first learned to throw a proper punch. And that led to immediate withdrawal from any programs and the second time I thought my father might be pushed to correct me. But he didn’t.

He studied me cautiously, flicking through endless transcripts of my achievements both at school and in the ‘informal’ environment of the service.

“You need an education,” he said. “History, I think. Don’t you?”

I looked at him. Perhaps he would swamp me in education until I learned to control myself. He read my thoughts, I believe, because he answered them immediately.

“When you’ve got your degree, you’ll come back here and train properly. If you like.”

I blinked. I’d assumed he was expelling me from his life forever. “I didn’t mean to hit him,” I said. “I know he comes from an awkward background and has a right to hate me.”

“He has no such right,” said my father sternly. “His anger comes from a terrible wound caused by severe loss and abandonment. It drives him on, but also forms his absolute loyalty to Queen and Country. Everyone needs a home.”

“I still didn’t mean to hit him,” I mumbled.

The only time I remember him losing patience with me was then.

“Don’t lie to me,” he said firmly. “Of course you meant to hit him and of course you should have. Next time I throw you in the lion’s den and you manage to escape, don’t apologise for it, or I’ll find you a secretarial position for life.”

I think I stopped breathing for a moment.

“Are you a secretary?” he asked, raising his voice. I remember my face burning with shame as my heart pounded frantically.

“No,” I answered, seriously nonplussed.

“No. You’re my tiger. Your fire will keep you alive. You need that. Never let anyone put it out. Not even me.”

As a parent I now understand he was trying to equip me, but as a person, it was the moment I realised I was on my own.

\---

My time at Lady Margaret Hall was all the more enjoyable knowing what I would most likely be doing when it was over. I treated it as a 4 year holiday, though initially with a fierce dedication to my studies. It fell apart at the end of my first year. I was late starter with boys – not because I wasn’t interested but because I didn’t want the distraction. I didn’t trust myself to not to be swept away. My parents had minimal contact with me at this point and I felt free as a bird, plus with my father’s words encouraging the flames within me to burn, I decided to throw caution to the wind.

The fellow in question wasn’t such a bad sort, but we were both a little wicked. Neither of us had honourable intentions, and it was summertime and we were young. But we were caught out (rather red handed) by another girl who liked him – one who was very much focussed on honourable intentions, and Charlie’s parents were so embarrassed by his behaviour that they moved him to another college. I was again threatened with expulsion, this time by my nun-like principal, who was mostly exorcizing her frustration at not being able to reach my father.

Nevertheless I kept my place at Oxford. I received a chiding note from daddy, a quote from Jean de Lafontaine, which read, ‘Nothing is more dangerous than a friend without discretion; even a prudent enemy is preferable’. It worked like a slap to the face. Once more it wasn’t my conduct he disapproved of; it was my inability to conceal it. And that mattered so very much more. To both of us.

The other students were the worst. Spiteful girls. I was shunned for the most part, so I put my head down and got my degree, enjoying every polite and simple pleasure on offer. The less polite pleasures I finally learned to keep close to my chest, and restrict to more discerning characters. 

I was awarded a first class honours degree. And then I became a spy.


	2. The Tigress

I used to think that it was the job that made me feel invincible, but I came to realise it was just youth. As a woman with a classical education I always felt I lacked the edge of some of my male counterparts, and was all the more alert for knowing my vulnerabilities. The other female intelligence officers at that time were essentially pen pushers and Girl Fridays. I found it almost impossible to relate to them in any way, though they were mostly respectful.

The men reacted in different ways of course, some with complete mockery, some with overinflated worship, some unable to look me in the eye for fear of being labelled sexist. I became a dab hand at dealing with the dismissive ones – those keen not to even register my presence in the room or existence as an agent. I endeared myself to my senior officers as a young recruit by being fearless, gutsy, and matching them word for word in a battle of wit. That funny little girl. 

The boy I’d attacked years before was an active OO, one of the best in the service. He was killed the first year I was there, which I quickly came to learn meant promotion. I knew my father was deeply saddened by this particular loss, though he wouldn’t speak of it to anyone. He simply went through the motions of shuffling agents. He could never look me in the eye during this process. But eventually the day came, after so many battles were fought and my girlhood had slipped away so completely, that my father gave me my license to kill. 

It occurred to me he must have been preparing for that moment for such a very long time. He did meet my eyes then – he forced himself to. They were red with pain. I never forgot it, and I never felt so loved. 

My father passed away suddenly but peacefully at home one evening, his bourbon still in his hand. My mother later told me he’d been wittering on about Penkovsky for hours, and kept talking in code. Something about a tiger in Moscow, she said. Too cold for tigers, he’d said. I never did explain it to her. I was devastated, of course, but also deeply relieved that I’d outlived him. Until then, whenever my life was threatened, I’d see his face as he stood over my flag covered coffin. Now, I was free to live and die, and could no longer be the light or dark of his day.

Never the best OO, my talents were in the planning, the scheming, the luxury of time to execute the deadliest of plans. The fire was in me more than ever, but I’d learned more about it by then. I was never a rogue with a gun. I was far worse than that. I cooked weaponry in my kitchen. When I pulled a trigger, the sky fell in. No neat bullet to deftly despatch the enemy. I didn’t end lives; I tore them apart. But a good OO is supposed to think on his feet. I always could, but not so much at the same time as dodging bullets. I naturally managed and manipulated those around me into what I’d calculated, and intuited, would be the strongest position. I saw the wider picture rather than being one pawn in the game. 

I got shot in the leg about a month before my 30th birthday. I was a fraction of a second too slow and had, truth be told, disobeyed orders in favour of seeing out what I considered to be a greater plan. It was. We won. The mission was a success. My debriefing was a pivotal moment in my career. I was congratulated on my prowess and it earned me many badges, actual and metaphorical. But I was also disciplined informally, quietly, for insubordination. I was curtly informed that I would not be returning to active field duty for the foreseeable future. In fairness it could have warranted a court martial, but that would have interfered with my duties. It was largely because I was far more useful pulling strings from London. But it was also due to the men. They couldn’t stand to see a wounded woman. 

I put a brave face on it. My popularity in the service was immense as a result of the mission and it attracted friends for life, not to mention my husband. But there was a rage inside me from then on that I carry with me to this day. I had never felt so emasculated, and when I said those words, the only person who didn’t laugh at me was Jeremy. He knew what I meant. So I married him.   
We laughed. Probably for about 6 months non-stop. I was deadly serious in operations of course, as was he, so we needed that release. After those years of running around, being stationed in London became reassuring, then fun. The service became a day job, and I became a real person. 

As for my mother, she would still give me that same look – as if she didn’t know who I was and would be foolish to trust me. It wasn’t until I married that she seemed able to identify my humanity. Even more so when I had Sophie. I gave her a granddaughter and all was forgiven. She still didn’t see me, of course, but now she stopped looking altogether. I disappeared in her eyes altogether when Tony was born. To her, family was the only possible life. But domestic bliss, the simplicity and finite beauty of all of it and all of them, only served to highlight the darkness inside me. More and more I began to crave the shadows again.

I was transferred to MI5 after returning to work. There was nothing available at MI6 for me, plus the IRA were keeping us extremely busy. I was frequently needed in Belfast, reporting to Dennis Mallory, the section chief at the time. 

Dennis and I understood each other, not only from the first time we met, but from our very first phone call. He was exceptionally supportive without ever being condescending. I suppose he reminded me of daddy, except Dennis had a way with words; an incredible eloquence, that made even his most ruthless decisions sound poetic. My father preferred to stay silent for fear of giving too much away, mostly punctuating with a mere look. Dennis’ candour was deeply refreshing, or rather was the absolute trust we shared that enabled it. 

It was the early seventies and we were at war with the IRA. Dennis was hit with loss after loss after loss. It was heart breaking to watch but I learned everything from him in terms of leadership. One thing that fascinated me was his temper. He reserved it for the very foolish or the very malicious who were essentially responsible for compromising safety, if not causing loss of life. His operatives always knew when they’d crossed a line and would scurry back over it quick smart. Our enemies knew they were dealing with a General, not a politician. He could be elegantly diplomatic, but he was not a diplomat at heart. He wasn’t afraid to reveal his true colours if he thought it would get us into shape.

I was spending more and more time in Belfast; the children with the nanny most of the time and Jeremy being mocked by his colleagues for being ‘the wife’ and spending more time with the kids than I could. He would calmly quote feminist theory at them and wax lyrical about the precious moments he was enjoying. Dennis observed my guilt and conflict, and always said the right thing at the right time, even if I didn’t want to hear it. 

I was on the receiving end of his temper once, and that was for flying to Belfast against his orders. I hadn’t taken them seriously, I suppose. It was Tony’s 5th birthday party, but I had felt I was needed in operations and that Dennis was being overly generous by telling me to ‘stay in London and help your little boy blow out the candles.’ I regarded that as sweet sentiment rather than a direct order, but I’d misunderstood. From my point of view I had a war to fight and was holding people’s lives in my hands, not just my children’s. From his point of view, he was fighting that war so that people like me could be with their children. He really let me have it and sent me home with my tail between my legs. Later on, I realised that he was in an unshakable position of sacrifice and I, at that time, was not. He wanted me to cherish the leeway I did have, no doubt motivated by his own guilt surrounding his own children. He also indicated that the time would most certainly come when I would not have the luxury to see my family when I wanted.

I ventured to find more of a balance after that, and really did enjoy the children until it was time to send them away to school. Opportunities were opening up for both Jeremy and I that would have been awkward to explain to Sophie and Tony. We both agreed we didn’t want them following our footsteps. For the children of two spooks, they seemed blissfully innocent and unassuming, so we tried to keep them that way. I’m not sure they’ll ever forgive us. But if I have protected them, then I can live without their forgiveness. Sophie has since asked me why we had children in the first place, given our situation. I couldn’t think of anything better to say than it’s what was done in those days. It was expected. But finding that to be an unacceptable reason to bring innocent lives into such a world, I instead looked at her fondly and said nothing.


	3. The Mother

Jeremy and I had the opportunity to work together at the start of the eighties. He was personable and I was discerning, and together we led a monumental recruitment initiative for the whole of the SIS.

They tell me I spawned a golden generation of recruits. It was less than three years, but yes, I found and nurtured the future of the security services during that time. They called me ‘mother’, these lost boys. Our cover story was that we were a fostering service who specialised in placing adolescents in good homes. We would interview and test these teenagers, under the guise of helping to find them the most appropriate route in life. We rounded up potential recruits, some younger than our own children, but with hearts as old as the world itself, and ensured they were given the right schooling and guidance.

There was one particular troublemaker, a very promising boy, who came to my attention when he had fallen foul of the law, quite severely, at just 12 years old. He got off with a caution, but his aptitude was noted by Special Branch. He was living with his aunt at the time, having been orphaned the year before, and she was finding it impossible to control him. We visited her and suggested the boy be given an opportunity to have a proper education.

She agreed, and after myself and Jeremy explained that he’d won a place on a government initiative to give especially promising boys a good start, he was more than cooperative. We placed him at Eton, his abilities well outstripping the average due to a sharp mind and excellent exposure to the world outside of the schoolroom. He had a talent for languages, and we had very specific plans for him once he was ready.

However, he was not accustomed to the daily disciplines of a boy’s school, nor very tolerant of his classmates who were very much of another ilk. He got into trouble again and again, the school notifying myself rather than his aunt. After just 6 months at Eton, they called me in to explain he would be expelled. I was fuming of course, though not unsympathetic. It wasn’t quite his world, and he knew it.

We decided to find a place perhaps more appropriate and enrol him at Fettes College in Edinburgh. It had been his father’s school, and for the most part, his native land, when he hadn’t been following his father’s job around Europe. He hated the idea, but I wouldn’t let him throw away another chance. Nor did I relish having to explain to my bosses how my investment had failed.

It was for me to give him the incentive to try again, so we detoured to Kent that day in the midst of various other assignments. While Jeremy drank tea downstairs with the aunt, I cornered the boy in his room. He was thuggish, brutal, spitting words at me, no doubt feeling thoroughly unwanted and as if we were constantly trying to get him off our hands. I needed him to know that everything we were doing was because he was wanted.

I had so much to say and not much time, but he raged at me bitterly. I tried to calm him down – a gentle word, a hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged me off with a snarl. We were short of time. I warned him sternly; my motherhood coming into play, but his behaviour was more than a match for me. My head filled with my father’s techniques, but in that moment I found a word for them: Guilt. That is how daddy managed me. My heart skipped a beat. Now faced with this boy, this wild child, pacing in his cage, he hardly needed more guilt, more establishmentarianism. He needed to be controlled, or else tear himself and his world apart, such was his rage. He needed to believe there was something more dangerous than himself.

I needed to still him or else lose him forever. I raised my hand and struck him with such force he fell to the floor. I immediately looked around to see if Jeremy had seen, but he hadn’t. The door was closed and he was still downstairs. The guilt was a like stab to the throat. He was still just a boy, still smaller than myself, more suited to a smack on the leg than a slap across the face.

But it worked. I knelt down next to him. He was in a heap and rubbing his face; eyes fixed on me, wide with shock. I clasped his hands in my own.

“Listen to me, James,” I said calmly. “I know you’re not a boy anymore so I won’t treat you like one. I am not from fostering services. I’m from the British Secret Intelligence Services. I’m not trying to give you a new home. I’m trying to give you a future, because we believe you have a lot to offer.”

He listened without a word while I explained how we’d come to learn about him, and that if he got his head down, he would have a place to go once he finished his education. It changed everything. He asked me many questions and I answered them as honestly as I could, but then we were out of time. I resisted the urge to comfort him, his cheek still pink, and stood, determined to be the strength he required.

“I have great hopes for you. But first you will go to Fettes College and get your O levels. But you will keep your nose clean or I will personally instruct them to use the cane.”

He fell into a silent pout, the same one he has even now. Just when I turned on my heel to leave, I heard a murmur. “OK,” he said quietly.

“Good,” I said, and walked away. I never forgot how James Bond needed a subtle blend of the carrot and the stick for best results.

None of the others challenged me in quite the same way. We visited young people all over the world, some from devastated worlds, not just broken homes. But nearly all jumped at the chance to be needed, to be useful. And, of course, to be powerful. I had started to lose my own linguistic skills due to spending so much time in London. It was while travelling and conversing in so many different languages that I realised how much I missed it.

Years passed. I left Jeremy in recruitment and jumped at the chance to become section chief in Northern Ireland. I succeeded Dennis, and he remained a firm friend and confidant as I found my way. I was the only woman in the running for the position, and it was a ground breaking appointment at that time. I was a curious commodity; a woman in charge, my stature amusing them even more. Of course they made a correlation between my post and motherhood. They had no way of seeing a powerful woman in another context. And then I heard I was either too heartless or too sentimental – often in the same breath, depending on who was critiquing me.

I flew home at weekends if I could. The children by now were both at university, and I’d been able to ensure they had a first rate education. Jeremy would visit, but truth be told after being thrown together for three years both at home and at work, we both enjoyed the space my position afforded us. Being a few years older than me, he was already considering early retirement, something I couldn’t stomach the idea of. My respect for him began to ebb away; he was a constant reminder that I too was ageing and I despised it. As far as I was concerned I had only just started.

I finally felt that everything I was and everything I had been was coming together, and I was blissfully in the right job. Tough decisions weighed on me, loss of life such a constant way of life, but I trusted myself to resolutely get the job done. I still had everything ahead of me: a dream of an overseas posting (that my position in Belfast transpired to be a test for). Soon, my work was the only thing that excited me; my role being neverending crisis management while the bloody menopause otherwise provided an inescapable numbness and dissatisfaction. Sophie and Tony graduated one after the other, and I felt nothing. I hardly knew them, and they didn’t care to return my admittedly sporadic attempts at communication. Jeremy lapsed more and more into his blinkered routines, his books, his poetry, and I felt all the worse for not being able to share in it. He would fly to Belfast and take me to the Waterfront Hall to enjoy a concert. I would sit with him, glancing at his face as it lit up during his favourite moments, wishing I could still have the same affect, if he would only open his eyes and see me again. But instead I felt like a mass of darkness that even Tchaikovsky could not expel.

When I walked the corridors at work, my darkness knew what it was doing. I was buttoned up tightly in exquisite suits; stiff and regimented, absorbed in work and removed from my own pulse. Another pulse took its place. We were the SIS, and we were not in the business of intimacy, so the fact I was turning to ice didn’t matter. Those rainy years as the evil queen were not my happiest, but certainly my most triumphant. Before I knew it, the only people who truly respected me were my operatives, and I loved them for it. I was not prepared, nor have I ever been, to lose any one of them. But I did. It became normality.

My marriage was a never-ending comfort blanket of predictability. I don’t know why he put up with me, but he did; year in, year out, under some romantic delusion that he was being the honourable husband by patiently accepting everything I threw at him. I couldn’t have done it without him, but it drove me to distraction that nothing I did ever made him bat an eyelid. His blind respect for me made me feel he couldn’t truly see me at all. He became my wallpaper, ignoring the blood on my hands, yet never noticing the tears in my eyes on the rare occasions when his damn poetry finally found a way in.

He was the one who told me to go when Hong Kong came up. It was an unofficial separation. We told no one, hardly even ourselves, but we both knew it was happening if only for the duration of my post. We also both knew we’d be there for each other if needed. I walked away from 25 years of marriage without a sensation in my entire body. I could appreciate later that my feelings then, or lack of them, were to a large degree due to my time of life, because I did love Jeremy again later on, very dearly indeed. 


	4. Hong Kong

When something reaches its extreme, it gives birth to its opposite. How true of me. Hong Kong was another world; one of humidity and spices and promise. Following years of feeling like I was shutting down more and more, something awoke inside me. Hong Kong welcomed me with immense respect and I felt a surge of liberation and omnipotence. It was true – Britain had no right being there. None of our customs, as much as I myself love them, had a place in this spirited climate.

On the outside, I remained polished. I found hope in the new agents reporting to me; a now healthier mixture of men and women, a generation on a par with my own children who were more used to seeing working and/or single mothers, and women in positions of power. They brought with them a whole new respect that my predecessors had never bothered to consider. And I adored it. I had my pleasures too, in my new world, as I danced around such powerful men, and some sweet and unassuming. The toxic temptress they called me, so I heard. I had their trust, their devotion, and their obedience. The responsibilities of leadership I was used to. The freedom of my life in Hong Kong went to my head.

It had been a few years since the days when I was sounding out a future workforce for the SIS, and now the fruits of my labour were visible. I was working with at least three of the recruits I’d cherry picked; Lee, Sarah and Tiago. They ate right out of my hand, eager to please, and more than capable of doing so.

Tiago Rodriguez was fluent in five languages. Born in the Canary Islands, his parents had given him a British nanny and spoke to him in both Spanish and Arabic; the mother tongues of his father and mother respectively. At age 8, they moved him to the Guangdong Province for his father’s business. They were prosperous for some time, and Tiago was exposed to Cantonese and Mandarin. However, the family was in over its head, and they were targeted by terrorists wishing to influence the fate of Hong Kong. Tiago was orphaned at 14. He came to our attention as a result of the incident. He was one of the last ‘lost boys’ I saw onto our program. I met him once – a sweet and conscientious boy whose compliance was almost concerning, but then he had been going to school in China. Jeremy saw him receive best possible education and Tiago joined the service aged 19 having already fast tracked a degree in computer science.

By the time I arrived in Hong Kong, he’d become something of a poster boy in our division. He was still sweet natured, though a grave hurt lingered inside which I sensed threatened to consume him any time he wasn’t utterly absorbed in his work. He practically worshipped me. I laughed about it with senior colleagues, his adoration shining for everyone to see. But secretly, it was exhilarating. I was under pressure to have him promoted; sent back to London to become one of our OOs. But I wouldn’t let him go. I felt his heart was too tender. That’s when I realised how I was feeling.

He was everything I shouldn’t be. Everything I reigned in. I saw our chief medical officer about my hormones, which seemed to be imploding. I attributed it now to post-menopause issues, but the doctor was more interested in my lifestyle change. He asked me where my husband was. I told him, and he recommended I invite Jeremy over for a long weekend, to settle me down. I pretended that I believed he’d cured me, and with an ambiguous smile, informed him I would have him killed if he ever breached confidentiality. “I have no doubt,” was all he said.

I couldn’t in all honesty call it love. Nor just lust. Both of those words are far too small. It was more like a deep, dark magic tingling throughout my body and mind. A pure brilliance  - an anomaly I’d have been foolish not to investigate. I hadn’t expected him. I hadn’t imagined life could throw something like this my way. With all the wonders of the world, all the horror, all the beauty, all the boredom and disappointment, all the touching humanity, never in my life had I imagined a man like this. A man young enough to be my son, and for the longest time, I accredited my feelings to some misplaced maternal instinct, fuelled by post menopausal upset and a sense of closure. A sense that my most exciting days were over and that it now fell to me to raise my own army from behind a desk. But I realised I was fooling myself.

I was the only one who could control him. He would do anything for me and I loved it; even more so when he tested me, as he was quite brilliantly and creatively defiant, dazzling me with what felt like space age technology. It felt I’d been playing with water guns and cardboard boxes and now was the intelligence I’d been waiting for. Far from being intimidated, I learned enough to give Q Branch a run for their money.

We played the game for a good couple of years, flirting artfully, our misconduct hidden in plain sight. We had an unspoken respect, or so I thought. I had always craved someone to have the power to stop me. Now I was that person, and this young man gave me his total and delicious submission. I had built up a wall around me of steely professionalism and undoubted integrity – a lifetime of creating a reputation, a veil, behind which I could do every damn thing with impunity. I was invisible. The only person who could see through it was Dennis, who could always tell from my tone of voice, even my tone of email, if I was ever out of sorts. Even Tiago only saw what he wanted to see. The exception was I liked the way he saw me.  So I let him.

One evening, he closed the door behind him, and I knew he had me. He took one look at me and he knew it too. I look back now and can’t believe we went as long as we did without acting on it. Even as he held a gun to my head at Skyfall, my body remembered him.

I was so hot for him I could hardly walk straight. It felt like I’d always burned for him on some level, before even meeting him. We were two sides of the same coin - not in any romantic way, you understand, but with all the power and unity that makes the planet spin on its axes; the same inevitable gravity. I’d never felt so alive. The truth of myself throbbed in my veins; the purity of my sin intoxicating. So this was who I was. Not quite the noble soldier, nor the cold-hearted strategist, nor the murdering mother. No, none of those things I’d framed myself as. Instead, I was a hot-blooded woman whose whole life had culminated in fucking an agent who had the power and ability, not to mention the design, to bring down several governments during his tea break. Well, who else could I ever crave in this way? How could anyone else ever complete my righteous shell of a heart?  I’d hardened over the years in my pursuit of a prosperous and protected England. He made me want to burn it all down and then laugh about it over a drink. He made everything look like a tedious board game compared to the life pounding through me when he was with me. Reality faded into a drab backdrop. This was my world now.

Dennis guessed I was having an affair purely from a comment I made about an opera during a phone call, so astute was he. I was sympathising, stalwartly, with Stiffelio’s adulterous wife, Lina. He saw straight through it, telling me that between my remark and the fact I was clearly holding something back, I had given myself away. But the fact he pinpointed it so precisely also gave him away. We had a conversation about conduct and discretion, life and death. He guessed who it was. But he said he trusted me to do the right thing.

“Be careful,” he said sharply before hanging up and left me feeling like a scolded young girl. I went home to find Tiago in my apartment. Sadly, my deep-seated propensity for raging defiance prevented me from doing the right thing. Instead I did the wrong thing, all night, in as many ways as possible while even discovering some new ones; almost wishing Dennis could find out about it if only to stop me and save me from myself.

No one could. Then came the day I discovered what Tiago had been up to. My heart was broken, the betrayal devastating, but I told no one, displayed nothing and threw myself into denial that I’d ever done anything other than work with him. I had to be in that mind set to make the choices easier. For the most part, knowing I had given him up made me feel I’d regained a step. He would have made a fool of me, so I sent him to be burned. It was him or me, and my reasoned morality kicked in further when it meant the safe return of three other agents, none of whom had ever betrayed me. This included Sarah, a young woman who told me she’d requested this posting because she wanted so much to work with me – an inspiration to every woman in the service, she said. I was glad that I could save her life rather than letting her down.

Any pain I did feel regarding Tiago’s proverbial execution I told myself was my penance.

To the SIS, my performance up to and during the handover was exemplary; my tenure a victory. I returned to London with all the honour I had ever dreamt of, and a scar I was at least able to conceal. When I saw Jeremy again, he looked at me as he hadn’t done in decades. He opened his arms and held me to him as if he’d been told I was long dead, a sight for sore eyes. I realised we’d both been taking each other for granted. From then on, his every little routine I found charming; reassuring. My mischief had been lived out. I had got away with it. And I had lost nothing.


	5. The Fire

My mother died the same afternoon I was promoted to M. She had been living with my aunt in her old age and we’d found a civil, even warm way of communicating. It seemed poetic somehow. I cried for who I wished she’d been, not really for who she was. Then I was running MI6.

I learned my lesson with Tiago, and any fondness I felt towards any of my staff I treated with extreme caution. But there’s only so much you can do while steeped in suspicion. At some point you have to trust. I suppose I had always known I couldn’t trust Tiago, I just didn’t care at the time.

James for the most part had turned out beautifully. A cultured brute, with a disarming innocence and charm. I’d had no contact with him in twenty years, but between Jeremy and keeping my ear to the ground had loosely followed his progress. He was always a combination of very old and very young, but the first time I called him into my office as his new boss, he was that same 12 year old who I’d just slapped.

I stamped my authority as soon as I could. I knew what I wanted for him and I went through the motions of pulling the correct strings. But I was never truly prepared for him to do what until then only Dennis had done. He could read me perfectly. He made me a better liar, but he also made me accountable. Once more, I was being challenged; this time by a man younger than my own son. I had been raised to respect authority and the chain of command. However difficult and cheeky I could be, I was never as impudent as him. I avoided disciplining him for it, however, knowing his attitude was part of his survival. And I wanted him alive.

Until I made him a OO, his record was excellent, laced only with a few dull assignments designed to humble him if he’d been insubordinate. He hated nothing more than tedium. He would return looking like a kicked puppy, and I would be as stern as I could be, though it was never easy. Then I would reward him with something exotic and dangerous, perhaps with a new shiny toy from Q Branch.

Yes, I loved him. You can’t have that kind of connection, that chemistry, without loving someone. But that was my business, and I maintained both a healthy regard and healthy disregard for him, keeping him quite at arm’s length. I was no longer anywhere near a position where I could compromise my judgement.

It wasn’t until after his experiences with Vesper and Quantum that I knew I could trust him absolutely, and the boy and the beast finally became the man. And then, of course, I had to bloody well kill him.

I longed for Jeremy after I thought James was dead. I yearned to speak to Dennis. But both had died that same previous year. I couldn’t stay in the apartment. Jeremy hated it anyway – far too flash he said. So after he died I moved into our townhouse that we originally bought for Sophie. I was on my own with my decisions.

James’ estate was dissolved and sold, but I managed to hold back his possessions, quite illegally, with the help of some Secrets Act loophole. They were due to be auctioned off. Tanner looked at me like I was quite mad, but I was resolute. I couldn’t explain why, even to myself. The odds were against his survival. But there was no body. And I trusted him.

My home is a mosaic of everyone and everything I had, but with a good space in the middle for what’s left. James filled that space. He stood there that night, and the moment I saw him I knew I’d been expecting him. I immediately felt so angry for everything he put me through. He was punishing me of course, sulking for being disposable, making me believe he was dead just to get back at me. Brat. But at the same time, he’d returned because he knew we needed him. Any agent breaking into the MI6 chief’s home would kiss their career goodbye and face severe punishment. I let him do it twice. Both times whilst castigating him, but actions speak louder than words, and James was always paying attention.

My demons caught up with me of course. Raoul Silva, a nightmare of my own creation. Women are always punished for sex, Jeremy would say, ruefully. Was I punished? I did my job, but knowingly harmed an agent for my own pleasure. I was in a position of power and left a devastating mark on an already tortured soul who came back to haunt me. Now I have to live with a terrible body count; apparitions made all the more vivid by my lack of occupation.

My life was duty and danger, love and death, belonging and alienation, all in the same morning. I was breathing in the air of a more real world; the battleground, while others shopped for their latest shiny distraction and instant gratification, the day leading nowhere else than a meal in front of the TV. Now I’ve been left with the latter. Except for him. How can I let of this?

I want him to tear me apart. If my life is to end, I want him to be the one to end it. Break me into a million pieces, all of them his; to scatter, to keep, to eradicate altogether. I am letting him do it because there is so little left of me that is good. And he knows it. He knows what I am. Sweet James, who believes his innocence is dead, yet has no comprehension of how much more there is to lose. There’s always so much more to lose. My lost boy, my warrior, my broken soul.

I don’t know when he’ll be back. I know he can never tell me. I know this is the way it is. But he has given me life when I thought I’d lost mine. Every time he leaves I wonder if I’ll see him again. And if I do, he may have moved on. But at least I know that we made the most of the time we had together. And that he saved me just as I once saved him. He gave me a respite. I feel healed (as healed as it’s possible for someone like me to be). He resuscitated my soul. I’m still going to Hell, but for the first time in months I feel like I’m not quite there yet.

So Monday brings new responsibilities. I am speaking to Sophie and Tony regularly. I have a future. Another mission.

…

 

When she awoke, it was dark, and her wrist ached from writing for so many hours. She read it through once, then with a kiss to the front cover, made her way through to the kitchen. She picked up a small metal bin and a box of matches then stepped into her slippers before sliding the patio doors open.

The evening chill hit her. It was a remarkably clear night, and even from her London home the stars were brightly visible. An almost full moon was waning, and she wondered briefly if James might be looking at the same moon. “La misma luna,” she whispered, remembering a forgotten promise from long ago.

Her mind cleared. She placed the bin on the patio with a clunk and cast the diary in heartlessly. She lit a match, throwing it in without hesitation. It didn’t take at first, so she lit another and another, persevering until the bin was raging alight. The flames danced on her face and her eyes flickered golden.

“ _Your fire will keep you alive. You need that. Never let anyone put it out_.”

She smiled as she remembered all of them, and savoured the fact she’d done exactly as she should do – as much as anyone in her profession could ever hope for. She’d stayed alive.


End file.
